Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: July 1990 Volume 28 Number 3, Pages 103–106

Where Crows Came Home to Roost

Franklin L. Burns

Page 103

The Eastern Crow [Corvus branchyrhynehoe branchyrnchos] is a common resident of this area, abundant in winter.

Its nesting period commences as early as March 25th, and the average date for complete sets of eggs is April 15th. In my young and more energetic days [c. 1895?] I hiked hundreds of miles and must have climbed at least a mile in my efforts to collect a representative series of eggs of this species, from the immaculate blue to the heavily spotted types, but I never succeeded in all my endeavors to find the rare erythristic type found in the cabinet of John Krider and in the National Museum.

For almost two centuries, one of the principal roosting places for this species was the Red Hill roost. The date of the establishment of this ancient roost is lost in antiquity. Tradition carries it back as early as 1705 when Nat Holstein settled in "Amasland" on 1000 acres of land which extended from the Swedes' Ford to the top of Red Hill in Montgomery County. Its commanding position in the lower part of the Chester Valley, its proximity to the Perkiomen, Schuylkill, and Delaware river valleys, and the surrounding rich farming area of the early Colonial period, made this hill a desirable roosting place perhaps soon after the first Swedish settlements. Many legends and known facts about the site make it a place of zoological interest: the lair of the last panther shot in the neighborhood; a legend of a wild dog that roamed the area; the summer home of the ungainly "squawkbirds"; the existence of red fox dens.

Page 104

It has been many years since I interviewed the venerable Jonathan Shainline, a resident of the vicinity for more than ninety-six years. When he spoke of his first visit to this crow roost, in his early boyhood, he exclaimed, "I thought all the crows in the world were there!" In my own boyhood days, winter after winter, it was the focal point of great multitudes of crows. They ranged over some five or six counties of southeastern Pennsylvania with a radius of many miles, The negligent farmer who put off his corn husking until the end of gunning season was apt to rue it, for the Red Hill roost sent forth long columns of very adept huskers.

Obviously, this vast assemblage of birds, covering at one time, in the memory of Captain John Dillen, at least fifty acres of heavily wooded land, v could not all have been indigenous to this section alone, but also included great migratory trains from the north that also made this roost their wintering place.

Continual persecution by firearms and the axe finally drove a great number, estimated as upward of 50,000 birds, to a site about seven or eight miles farther up the valley, near Diamond Rock Hill in Tredyffrin Township. This was only a temporary stand, however, as it had the disadvantage of having continuous forest on all sides, while crows prefer a well-wooded elevation entirely surrounded by open country.

The great Red Hill roost was abandoned by 1897 after being in existence for at least nearly two hundred years, and we no longer observed on a winter's evening the picturesque trains of sable-coated brethren passing over head "as the crow flies" to the famous crow metropolis.

The Diamond Rock roost existed from about 1899 to 1903, although crows roosted there in reduced numbers a few years earlier and later. When Dr. W. E. Rotzell studied it, from 1899 to 1901, it was a shifting roost of about ten acres, moving from place to place when disturbed. Flight lines ascertained by compass have shown that crows feeding by day at Audubon, on the Perkiomen Creek, Port Kennedy, Norristown, Conshohocken, Westtown, Bryn Mawr, Radnor, Devon, Wawa, and even as far away as League Island returned to this roost at night.

Sometime before 1890 another roost was established on the North Valley Hills farther to the west, near Coatesville. T. H. Wilson estimated the number of birds there at from 30,000 to 50,000. By 1895 this roost had shifted to the South Ridge between Coatesville and Pomeroy, but later it moved back again to the North Ridge and, according to E. F. Stone, was occupied for several winters. Crows returned to this roost from Kennett Square, Tinicum, Mortonville, and probably from Lenape, while a number of flight lines from the north and west also converged there.

A more recent roost has appeared on the South Valley Hills near Frazer, and has been shot up more than once.

Page 105

In January 1933, the newspapers reported that the "Perkiomen Hunting Association", in conjunction with a "State game protector", had surrounded a piece of wooded ground adjoining the State Penitentiary at Gratersford and killed 700 crows, and that a few nights later the same group killed 800 more. A roost near New Britain was also shot up by another group, slaughtering another 300 helpless birds, all under the mistaken belief that they were doing a "meritorious deed". These were both small roosts, of perhaps 2000 to 3000 birds each.

Actually, at this season of the year this species can do little harm and much good as scavengers. That I admire the crow it is needless to say: he has brains, and will survive all attempts to exterminate him. The crow has as great an antipathy for the red fox as he has for the hawk and owl, and will mob them for miles.

On May 17th, 1915 I banded a young crow, just out of the nest, at Daylesford; four years later he was shot near Phoenixville, a distance of about six miles from his birthplace. Another I banded in its nest near Berwyn on May 23d, 1915; ten years later it was recovered, a bird astute enough to escape the gunners for a decade.

Although we still hear that a crow's tongue must be split to enable it to talk, that severe operation is seldom, if ever, performed. Samuel Davis' pet crow has a vocabulary of six words: "Hello!" and "Get out of them flowers!".

That the crow knows when he has had enough and also profits by error is proven by the following incident. A friend of mine, in his boyhood days, raised a crow from the nest and kept it as a pet, much to the annoyance of the family. One day his mother busied herself in the kitchen compounding mincemeat when Jim Crow hopped up onto the table, with open mouth, to demand his share. Without thinking of the probable consequences, she poured a spoonful of brandy down his greedy throat. The bird flew out through the open door and lit on the grape arbor, where for more than an hour he behaved like an obnoxious sot, uttering volley after volley of invective in his crow's language, being unquestionably in a state of inebriation. After he had slept for twenty-five hours he recovered, but he never again accepted anything proffered in a spoon!

This crow was a harlequin, and most diabolically inclined to torment the father of the boy. The day of his demise he rode on the wheelbarrow load of onion sets the father was planting, being careful to fly off when the handles of the barrow were lowered and wheelbarrow was brought to a halt. The onions were planted by hand, a most tedious task, and when the planter had accomplished one long row across the length of the field he looked back to discover the bird only a few paces behind him -- and the long row of sets pulled up and laid here and there on the surface!

Harry Wilson gives an instance where an almost pure albino crow nested for at least ten seasons in a bit of woodland near his home at Gum Tree. During cold weather it flocked and roosted in a community roost on the South Valley Hills about a mile west of the Veterans' Hospital in Coatesville, but each morning, if it was not too stormy, it, and presumably its family, would return to the Wilson farm to feed.

Page 106

More than twenty-five years ago this roost in Valley Township was broken up by the cutting of the timber. The crows then gathered by the thousands nightly, from November to March, in a timbered tract of about two hundred acres on the South Valley Hill in West Sadsbury Township, southeast of Atglen. The birds came from all directions, and by their flight it is believed that they came from a distance of twelve miles or more.

Since the breaking up of the great crow roosts in this section, our local birds have not resorted to gathering in distant roosts, and have remained in small groups in nearby woods. After the destruction of the chestnut trees by the blight, crows have also commonly nested in tall deciduous trees or evergreens in open fields. During the cold weather, every morning a bevy of them, with a sentinel posted in a tall tree, has visited my back yard on Conestoga Road regularly at daybreak.